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February
2007
SPECIAL REPORT:FSTC Celebrates 20 Years in the 'Test' LaneBy: Brian Ward

About an hour northeast of San Francisco, at a small business
park in San Ramon, Calif., the 11 engineers and support team
of Fisher-Nickel Inc. are hard at work measuring what the
latest foodservice equipment will do. Test stations, one
after another, look like small operating rooms, with mazes
of wires, probes and computers monitoring every unit’s
energy intake, exhaust, water consumption and food output.

At one station, a significant new fryer is getting the whole
workout. At another, a warewasher. A few feet away, a combi.
Around the corner are more pieces, each facing a
standardized test.

Having celebrated its 20th anniversary at the advisory board
meeting and open house in November, Pacific Gas & Electric
Co.’s Food Service Technology Center is a busy place these
days. Typically 20 individual pieces of equipment are either
in testing or waiting at any given time. Don Fisher and Judy
Nickel figure about 75 pieces now come through their doors
each year. Manufacturers account for most of the business.
Large commercial chains account for the rest. But either
way, there’s a direct or indirect “chain pull” most of the
time, Fisher says.

“We have about 12 active categories of equipment right now,
(mainly) driven by the utility incentive program,” Fisher
figures. “We have the Energy Star categories (fryers,
hot-holding cabinets, reach-in refrigerators and freezers,
steamers). Fryers and steamers are probably the top
appliances. Then griddles, ovens, combi-ovens.

“We’re moving into dishwashers. … Dishwashers are now at the
top of the Energy Star initiative for new categories. Fryers
have always been active. And griddles.” Fisher also notes
the FSTC now is “the keeper of the list” of equipment
meeting efficiency requirements for sale in
California—another boost to the Red Bull pace at the
facility.

Early
Challenges, Building Momentum

The hustle-bustle is a far cry from the program’s early days.
During the 1980s, no such lab existed anywhere. Standardized
test methods for equipment were all but unimagined. A few
procedures existed, but they weren’t widely applied, and the
science behind them was rudimentary by today’s standards.
ASTM Int’l, the engineering and standards-development body
then known as the American Society for Testing & Materials,
had not ratified a single test standard for foodservice
equipment. The foodservice industry just wasn’t into
testing.

But the times were changing. The energy crises of the ’70s
had spurred McDonald’s to look hard at energy consumption
and kitchen productivity, and the Oak Brook, Ill., company
had built its own equipment and ventilation test lab in
nearby Wood Dale. Meanwhile, in California, where the
population and environmental movements both were booming, it
was clear that future energy production and consumption were
going to be real challenges.

Against that backdrop, PG&E’s Bettie J. Davis—formerly Bettie
Ferlin and now head of Davis Project Development—began a
push for a foodservice test lab to measure energy
consumption and productivity performance.

“In ’86, EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) had a focus
group or a think tank group in Palo Alto,” Fisher remembers.
Because of energy work he had been doing for the Canadian
government, he was there. So was Davis. “We got to
chatting,” he says. “We both had research reports from each
other in our briefcases. Six weeks later, I got a call.”

After much consideration, PG&E had given the go-ahead for a
limited project, and Fisher-Nickel, which then was literally
just Fisher and Nickel, was contracted to operate the
program. With co-funding from EPRI, the Gas Research
Institute and the National Restaurant Association, the
fledgling part-time test project, which involved testing all
day Saturdays and Sundays in a working cafeteria, began.

But the early going was slow. No templates existed. Each test
had to be developed from the ground up, revised on trial and
error as a whole new body of knowledge was taking shape. The
notion of creating truly standardized tests, by which
everyone would rise or fall, was unfamiliar and spooky.

Support And
Growth

“The industry wasn’t in the habit of testing,” Fisher says.
“The manufacturers were supportive of our initiative but
nervous about ratifying test methods. But we were seen as a
test kitchen, and it was good marketing.” Gradually the test
protocols drew more interest and multiplied. Support grew.
But so did the nervousness, he says.

“We developed the griddle test method in ’87, and it was
ratified (by ASTM) in late ’89,” Fisher says. “The fryer
method was ratified in ’90.” That was just two test methods
in almost five years since project conception, he points
out. Four years since the actual start of the program.

“It was a struggle,” he says. “We were swimming across steam,
but never upstream,” is how he puts it. “The manufacturers
never disagreed philosophically. They supported us. …They
didn’t always want the objective data, but [often] they
wanted to use it. It was a long, long effort.”

Through it all, though, PG&E remained supportive, he says,
and the program picked up momentum. By ’96, 10 years into
it, test methods for 10 different types of equipment had
been ASTM ratified. Five years later, the total had jumped
to 20. And in the past five years, the number has risen to
35.

The scope of the project has grown, too. Part-time testing in
a cafeteria became full-time testing in a new lab in ’89.
PG&E lent admin support staff. Richard Young, senior
engineer and director of education, joined Fisher-Nickel in
’89. Staff grew, and today the team totals 15 people,
including those at the Wood Dale, Ill., ventilation lab,
which changed hands a few times over the years and is now
owned by Architectural Energy Corp.

Coming
Together

In the past few years, the FSTC group has had other successes
as well. The group hosted its own symposium in 2000. One of
the “big breakthroughs,” Fisher says, was a groundbreaking
study called “Effect of Appliance Diversity and Position on
Commercial Kitchen Hood Performance,” commissioned by the
American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and
Air-Conditioning Engineers. The ASHRAE study measured
stunning differences in capture and containment exhaust
rates depending on exact placements, side to side and fore
and aft, of various kinds of cooking equipment.

Another big event, related to that study, was the publication
of a ventilation white paper that now resides on the
Foodservice Consultants Society Int’l. Web site,
www.fcsi.com.

“Having our test methods be adopted as the measuring stick
for Energy Star’s [cooking equipment standards] was a
breakthrough, too,” Fisher says. Then there was the New
York Times story last year that made the FSTC famous. And
the collaboration among the four investor-owned California
utilities to promote energy efficiency.

Fisher also notes the strong relationship developed with the
North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers.
Not to mention the Champion of Energy Efficiency award
Fisher received last year from the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy.

More is yet to come, say both Fisher and Nickel. “Momentum
will build around appliance testing,” Fisher says. Utility
incentive programs will expand, and the FSTC will also work
closely with the also-expanding Energy Star initiative.
Dishwashers are a hot topic now, and another project, with
huge implications for foodservice, will study and set
standards for hot-water heaters.

“In full-service restaurants, hot-water load is comparable to
cooking-equipment load,” he says. “We have to measure that.
Commercial water heating accounts for 40% of California’s
natural gas consumption, and foodservice accounts for half
of that,” he figures.

Ice machines, load shifting and water consumption all loom
large on the horizon. Together with the lab’s advisory
group, Fisher says, the FSTC will set priorities and keep
moving forward.